Henry Taylor: B Side
A sweeping survey of thirty years of work by Los Angeles artist Henry Taylor, a painter, sculptor, and installation artist, and one of the most singular voices in contemporary American art. His portraits and allegorical tableaux are populated by friends, family, strangers, athletes, and entertainers, in compositions that feel brash at first glance and linger long after.
Taylor paints on cigarette packs, cereal boxes, and found supports, and his installations recode found materials like bleach bottles and push brooms to play on art historical tropes and modernism's fraught relationship with African and African American culture. Taken together, the work is a deep, humane observation of Black life in America at the turn of the century. Published to accompany the major retrospective at MOCA Los Angeles.
